Mother Iron’s eyes as always resembled distant furnaces, fires banked on a hillside at dusk. I had never seen her face, only her cowl, but I still felt as if I could reach past the hem of her garment and touch another world. Relaxing my pace, I slowed to meet her.
The Factor’s ghost was not about. This surprised me slightly. They’d been together the last time I’d seen them. Others moved through this place, but the usual practice was to avoid if possible, or pass quickly and quietly if not. Only those of us who had business here met on purpose.
“Greetings, Mother Iron,” I said as politely as I could. The Dancing Mistress had made it very clear to me that this was one of the old, great powers of Copper Downs, for all that she kept herself cloaked and damped down to nearly a cinder.
“Green.” Her voice carried that same rustiness I had always associated with Mother Iron, a sense of something vast breathing from far away. And hot, as well.
“I had hoped to meet you here.” I could not decide if I was a supplicant, a petitioner, or even in some strange way a peer to her. Mother Iron always moved to her own will, and seemed utterly indifferent to whoever and whatever surrounded her.
“You bear the weight of history.”
My right hand strayed to my belly. For one odd moment, I thought she meant the child. Then I realized she must be referring to the Eyes of the Hills.
“History threatens to return and weigh upon us all, Mother Iron.”
She huffed. A sigh? I waited, to see what else she might say. Speaking with her was something like playing the traveler’s game. Finally: “That price was already paid. More than once.”
“I would not know what was paid before, Mother Iron. I only know what is balanced in the scales this day. And this day I have a problem older than the time in which it comes to me.”
“Older time comes for you. The elder days of Copper Downs seek to return.”
That made some sense. Erio was stirring for reasons beyond the latest problems in the succession of seats on the Interim Council. Of course, that kingly ghost could have been yapping his head off for centuries and I would not have known the difference. Somehow I suspected that Ilona would have understood, and mentioned it. “I have taken these gems from a fool, who would have used them to bribe greater fools. But they are not of this city.”
She rumbled again: “That price was already paid.”
Softly, I said, “I know. And Desire rises here. Her daughter Marya is slain.”
“Another power from an older time. Only the oldest wisdoms can save this city from its oldest threats.”
With that nearly pointless advice, she turned away and vanished between one step and the next. Whether it was only the darkness swallowing her and the black cowl she wore, or a more ghostly disappearance, I could not say. Most of the time, ordinary folk in ordinary bodies were sadly outnumbered Below.
I wondered how it had been for the miners, back in the morning of the world. Had they broken open the crust of the world only to find a population of haunts and legends already awaiting them? Or had they brought their fears with them on first creating the Below?
Musing so, I nearly ran into a man who seemed altogether flesh and blood. My short knife flashed into my right hand-it was rare for anyone to achieve such a complete advantage of surprise over me. I kept my point from his throat, though, for already I knew this was no attack.
“Excuse me.” His nervous voice was thin, reedy, as a boy not quite grown to his prime, though he seemed tall enough in the glow of my coldfire.
That was such an unlikely response to having a blade pulled that I had to laugh. Stepping back, I gave him room, and looked at my involuntary captive.
“I am sorry,” I said. “You startled me. This is unusual.”
His head pumped vigorously as he nodded. I was pretty sure he was male. For one thing, no woman with any decent sense of herself would wear such a hideous mask. His head was wrapped in bands of leather over which were affixed two goggle-eyed lenses and a tiny, sputtering lamp between them so faint I could not see the use of it. His mouth was covered with a verdigrised brass muzzle with needled teeth set into it, that last detail seemingly just for the look of the thing. He wore musty dark robes and a heavy leather belt creaking with tools and devices.
Had I seen him before hearing his voice, I might have found him threatening. Instead I realized I faced a man dressed as a kind of mummer. A boy, really, with a man’s height.
“Y-you are Green?”
I didn’t think he meant that as a question. “Yes, I am Green.” Now he was making me nervous. “I do not know you.”
“Mother Iron called me to y-you.”
The tulpa had just left me moments ago, but that did not mean she had not spoken to this boy-man, perhaps hours ago. Or even years. I’d long since understood that her rules were not my own.
“Who are you?” I asked gently, hefting my short knife for emphasis.
“I am Archimandrix.”
Now there was pride in his voice. Pride of place, pride of purpose, pride of self. I could hear it. I knew that pride, from when I had been a Lily Blade. Only a Lily Blade, I corrected myself.
“And what does an Archimandrix do? Besides heed the call of Mother Iron?” I was not so sure I would, or could, ignore her call should Mother Iron choose to speak through me.
“I lead the oldest guild,” he squeaked. Archimandrix cleared his throat and tried again. “I am the master of the sorcerer-engineers.”
Frankly I would have doubted if he had mastery of a bathtub, but I’d long given up on judging people from their seemings. How many had failed and died owing to wrongly judging me on my seeming, after all? And how many more yet would?
But the sorcerer-engineers? I was to learn that they were in truth guardians of ancient wisdom, but at that moment I did not know them from dunny divers. “I do not recognize your guild. And I have studied the old Duke’s lists.” Thanks to Mistress Danae’s careful instruction and endless books during my days in the Factor’s house, I could name even of some of the most obscure guilds, such as the Brotherhood of Lens Grinders, and the Worshipful Order of Loom Mechanics.
“You know us from the brass-ape races.” There was that pride again.
“I know of those races,” I said cautiously. “I’d always assumed them sponsored and designed by men in little workshops about the city.”
“Well, of course.” His tone was quite reasonable. “Those men in little workshops are us. The sorcerer-engineers. Our true craft is much deeper and older. The brass apes are how we enter into the life of the city. The work excuses and covers up many of our other tasks.”
That I could imagine. That work could excuse and cover up almost any other task. Still, this Archimandrix was not an easy man to speak with. As if he followed a script in his head that had not been written to include me. Further patient prompting was indicated. “Why did Mother Iron call you to me?”
“Sh-she said I might need you.”
That he might need me, I thought. Not the other way around. Curious. “That may well be true.” I kept my voice slow, in order to trail behind my thoughts. Was this about the Eyes of the Hills? “I might need you in turn.” Perhaps. “Tell me more of your true craft.”
“Those are secrets closely guarded down the generations,” he said dubiously, still speaking from his place of pride.
In those words, I realized Archimandrix would not be turned by threat of force, weak as this one sounded in other ways. He possessed a steel core beneath the tissue of confusion that wrapped his surface.
I could admire that.
“There is nothing I can say to you,” I told him, “which would be convincing of my credentials if you do not already believe in them. I do not know how Mother Iron calls you, or what that call means to a sorcerer-engineer. I can hardly claim to understand her myself. Only that I know Mother Iron has guarded this city down those long generations over which your secrets have been kept. And that she accepts something of me into her domain here Below.”